ericdontigney

Andric: Chapters 1 and 2

This is one of those story ideas that's been chewing my grey matter for a while. So, I took today to write something that has no immediate consequence but would help clear some chaff from my brain. Feel free to weigh in if you want. Otherwise, enjoy! ~Eric

***

Chapter 1

Andric hunched a little more as he tried to cross the street, trying his best to be as unnoticeable as possible. He only needed to make it another dozen steps, and he’d be...

For Fans in Australia, Volume 1 Sale

My publisher let me know that Amazon Australia is running a deal on the Unintended Cultivator Volume One ebook during July. It's $1.49 AUD. If you've been trying to convince someone to give it a try, now is your time!

Here's a link: https://www.amazon.com.au/Unintended-Cultivator-One-Eric-Dontigney-ebook/dp/B0CNL13YW8

Update: Release, Bloopers, Isekai Terry, and the Next Week or So

Not that anyone really needs the reminders, but the Volume Three chapters will mostly be moving out of the public section and behind the paywall for the $3 tier tomorrow to satisfy Amazon's exclusivity clauses. Also, the Volume Three ebook goes live on Tuesday, July 2. You can preorder a copy here.

Now, I talked with my publisher. If everything goes right right, the audio...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 62 – In the Wake of...

Sen reached down, plucked Ai from the ground, and swung her up into his arms. She was yelling and smiling and, in a few seconds, he would start to listen. Before that, though, he just let himself breathe. He let himself feel the impossibly soft strands of her hair brush his face in the gentle breeze. He reassured himself that she was, in truth, safe. He’d known that she was since Auntie Caihong and Fu Ruolan would have built a monument made of corpses as a warning to future fools brave or s...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 61 – Sorting Through the Wreckage

While Sen knew that he could activate his qinggong technique or fly himself on a qi platform to get back to the mostly destroyed sect compound, he couldn’t seem to rouse the ambition. He’d been focused and even domineering with Lunhan and Liwen, but he’d done that out of pure, brutal, unadulterated necessity. Now, there was no necessity to drive him to do anything. The Twisted Blade Sect was no more. Whatever survivors that had been left in the compound were either dead or fleeing for t...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 60 – The Price of Survival

Yunhan and Liwen stared at him with scared, confused expressions. Sen supposed that was to be expected after everything he’d done. He’d earned those looks, and he had to fight his instinct to put them at ease. He needed them scared. Not terrified to point that they’d try to fight him for fear of their lives, but scared enough that they’d listen and do what he needed them to do. He let the silence drag out until Yunhan worked up the courage to speak.

“What things?” asked the ...

Isekai Terry TOD: Chapter 27 – Meeting People You Don’t Want to Meet, Part 4

As they waited for the mistress of the house to join them, Terry watched with more than a little satisfaction as Gilvane became increasingly nervous. He did keep his amusement on the inside, though. While he might be willing to talk to the woman, his goal remained the same. He wanted to get out of the pseudo-castle and out of the town more than ever. He could almost feel the jaws of unwanted destiny snapping closed around him like some kind of malevolent celestial bear trap. He ...

Vol 3 Paperbacks/Hardcovers Are Live! Apparently

Okay, because Amazon does as Amazon wills, the paperback and hardcover versions of Unintended Cultivator Volume Three are already live over on Amazon. If you've been waiting to order a physical edition, you can do it now.

If you've been waiting to leave a review on Amazon, you can leave one on the paperback or hardcover pages. It will get transferred over to the kindle edition when that goes live.

You can find the Volume Three paperback 2024-06-29 20:10:03 +0000 UTC View Post

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 59 – Things to Talk About

It took a long, long time before the tears ran dry, and Sen came back to himself. He thought he’d felt empty before, but that had been nothing. He was utterly hollow now. It seemed that the faintest breeze would be enough to shatter the fragile shell of him. He let himself sit like that for a little while. He knew he couldn’t sit there much longer, but he needed at least a few moments of calm before he faced the rest of the world and all of its demands again. Almost of their own volition,...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 58 – Take That Up with the Heavens

This isn't the last chapter, but this is where the whole sect war arc was headed. Now that everyone can see what it was all about in a big picture way, I'm leaving comments on for this one chapter so people can weigh in.

***

Elder Mu tried to glare at him, but it didn’t look her heart was in it. She looked at the decapitated head of the muscular elder before turning her gaze on Aihan. Shaking her head a little, she reached out and closed the other woman’s eyes. Sen wa...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 57 – Old Wounds

Sen had taken his time approaching the nascent soul cultivators. Some of that was basic caution. The easiest way for him to get caught was for him to get physically seen. The shadows that obscured him would do a good job of that, but he had no way of knowing how acute the elders’ vision was in the darkness. Moving slowly dramatically reduced the odds of them noticing a shadow behaving oddly. The rest was that he wanted them group up. They had spread out a bit, no doubt hoping to spot his ap...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 56 – A Cleansing Fire

Sen only got a few steps away from the inert pair before he stopped. He looked back at them. He’d mostly excluded the woman his killing intent, only maintaining enough pressure on her to ensure she remained immobile. She’d been unconscious to begin with, so he didn’t expect that it would take much to keep her that way. He had been surprised to discover that he actually had enough control to do that, though. It was something he’d been working on where he could, but it generally wasn’...

Dragon Con and Other Sundries

Okay, so, while I am locked in to attend Dragon Con this year, the Dragon Con powers that be decided not to have me attend as a professional guest. I applied pretty late, so that's not really a surprise. What it means is that I won't be appearing on any panels, although I imagine I'll probably attend a few.

However, my publisher (Shadow Alley Press) maintains a vendor table at the convention. So, there will be scheduled times when I am at their table to sign books and generally look li...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 55 – I’m Holding You Responsible

Sen could see the indecision on the man’s face. There was the desperation to save his cultivation on the one side, but that prospect meant fighting a battle that would almost certainly end in destruction. On the other side was the guarantee of life, a potent spur for anyone, but it was the kind of life that no cultivator wanted. To give up their hard-won power, the prestige of being a cultivator and of being in a sect, all to live as farmers or merchants? To surrender control in a world the...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 54 – Unkind Choice

While his killing intent was enough to suppress many of the remaining cultivators who had made up the core membership of the sect, it wasn’t enough to keep all of them suppressed indefinitely. He supposed it was to be expected. However little he thought of this sect and anyone who joined it, these were still core cultivators. They had no doubt been shepherded along with treasures and opportunities, but even powerful support couldn’t replace determination and certainty of purpose. Both wer...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 53 – A Purpose

Sen watched as Falling Leaf left the de-limbed corpse of the core cultivator in the copse of trees and ventured back out into the sect. Once she was gone, he walked over the corpse and glared down at it. He’d arrived just after she had, somehow, reappeared in his spiritual sense. It had taken swift action to conceal himself before she noticed he was there. She had an uncanny way of knowing when he was nearby even when he was hiding. His world had almost stopped when her presence in his spir...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 52 – Pursuit

Falling Leaf slumped against a wall, having evaded her pursuer for at least a few moments. She peeled her hand away from the wound in her side and sucked in a breath at the pain. She had been careless. That carelessness had led to the wound she gently poked at with her fingers. Part of her knew that such mistakes could happen to anyone, be they ghost panther, human, or old monster. She’d just been too confident in her own skills. Too certain that the threats in this place would be manageabl...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 51 – The Wrong Side

Sen could hear shouting and screaming throughout the sect, but he wasn’t sure how much if any of it was because of Falling Leaf and Glimmer of Night. He was vaguely aware of their positions but he was doing his best not to focus too hard on where they were or how many of the sect cultivators were around them. They knew what they were doing. They didn’t need him watching over their shoulders. It was entirely for his own equilibrium. He wanted to pay enough attention so that he could go to ...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 50 – One Man

When Sen had spilled all of those different cores on the ground, he’d expected it to be impressive but even he hadn’t anticipated the true scope of the devastation it would create. The wall, the gate, the cultivators behind the gate, and several nearby buildings had been… He supposed the right description was torn apart. It wasn’t quite on the level of what he expected more advanced nascent soul cultivators could do, but it was a frankly shocking level of destruction. For the...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 49 – Monsters

Bin Enle stood on the walls and tried to suppress a yawn. It wasn’t tiredness, just boredom. Aside from the strange beast tide a week or so back, nothing interesting ever happened on the wall. It had given him an excuse to fire an arrow into the darkness. It hadn’t been entirely unjustified. He had thought that something was moving out there. Spirit beasts were attacking the walls. He’d been wrong, but it was still exciting for a few seconds there. Then, things had mostly gotten back to...

Isekai Terry TOD: Chapter 26 – Meeting People You Don’t Want to Meet, Part 3

Terry didn’t storm through the halls of the quasi-castle he’d found himself in. Storms break things, he assured himself. I’m just moving with purpose. Intense purpose. That’s all. Several attempts to get him to stop had happened, but it seemed his display against the two brutes had left its mark. While lots of people kept talking at him, nobody tried to physically stop him. Of course, that was of only limited value to him because he didn’t actuall...

Volume Three (Lower Tiers and Public/Free Members)

Hey everybody. Volume Three will drop on Amazon in about 12 days (July 2). I'm pretty excited about that because...entirely valid and sensible reasons (vanity, cough cough). Just as importantly, it also means a finalized cover for the book. Check it out below

Pretty badass, am I right?

Okay, so, when a volume goes live, I'm only allowed to have a certain amount available to the public (ar...

Volume Three ARC (Upper Tiers)

Okay, so Volume Three drops on Amazon in about twelve days (July 2). That's always an exciting time. It also means that it's time for me to hand out a link for upper tier members to grab their free ebook copies. But first...check out the cover for Volume Three.

Pretty badass, right?

Anyways, that should be enough text and other stuff to make sure that link doesn't show up in the p...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 48 – The Wisdom of Falling Leaf

Sen didn’t say much as he, Falling Leaf, and Glimmer of Night made their way through the wilds and toward the Twisted Blade Sect. The prospect of walking through such a place at all, let alone through the darkness of night, would once have been enough to leave Sen in a cold sweat. The wilds were dangerous in the full light of day. They became much more when the sun fell below the horizon. Now, he barely gave it a thought. His night vision wasn’t quite a replacement for daylight, but it wa...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 47 – Grounded by Normalcy

Sen had fully expected Falling Leaf to yell at him or possibly hit him. Once he stepped a bit closer to the fire and she got a good look at him, though, the anger mostly bled out of her expression. I must not look very good, thought Sen. He glanced at Uncle Kho who also gave Sen a considering look. While not as angry as she had been, Falling Leaf was apparently unwilling to let things go entirely.

“You took too long,” she said.

Sen nodded and said, “It was a little ...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 46 – Infiltration, Part 6

If Sen were able to physically sweat, which he was pretty sure he wasn’t able to do any more, he would have been soaked to the bone. He’d moved on from the zone of authority that was given to the inner sect and core members, and moved into the elders’ domain. Life got a lot harder at that point. There were fewer people around, which was a blessing. It seemed that no one wanted to be found around the elders’ homes without an exceedingly good reason. That made moving between the buildin...

Ice Skating Misadventure

Okay, so I did plan on writing chapters yesterday. It seemed chance had other things in mind. I took a fall during my ice skating class last night. It wasn’t a graceful, gentle fall. I went over backwards and landed flat on my back. It really knocked the wind out me. And a grown man falling flat on his back…well, as you can imagine, my back didn’t feel great afterwards. I pretty much took a shower, ate something, and went to bed. The good news is that I didn’t crack my head on the ice...

Unintended Cultivator V9: Chapter 45 – Infiltration, Part 5

Sen swiftly discovered that his salacious rumor theory was more than true. Even hidden as he was during the daylight hours, it was all anyone could talk about. There was endless speculating about what had happened and why with a morbidly gleeful undercurrent to it all. While he was happy that his little subterfuge had seemingly worked, he was a little disappointed in the people of this sect for being so happy about it. Still, the one thing he didn’t hear anyone speculating about was some my...

Comments Are Off Again

Okay. I blame myself for most of this. I knew it was a mistake, but I relented on turning the comments back on because I felt bad about it, and I know a lot of people see that as part of the whole Patreon experience. But the truth is, I turned them back on way before I ready. I knew this sect war arc wasn't going to be popular with at least part of the readership because they want Sen to be humane, or, at the very least, discriminating in his murderous actions. That isn't the world he lives i...

Isekai Terry TOD: Chapter 25 – Meeting People You Don’t Want to Meet, Part 2

Terry was eventually deposited in a room. It was a plain room with a small table and a chair. He eyed the window. It looked like it might be big enough for him to go through, but it wouldn’t be a fun time. He’d probably get cut up pretty badly on his way out since the window didn’t actually open. Plus, when he pulled back the curtain, he saw that it looked down on some kind of interior courtyard two floors down. Resigned that he was just going to have to meet what petty kingling had sum...